AMENDED, a podcast from Humanities New York
Sex was never the only battleground for women’s voting rights.
Most Americans learn one, specific version of the history of woman suffrage: that a few bold, white women led a movement for equal voting rights and achieved victory 100 years ago, when the United States ratified the 19th Amendment. That, we’re told, enabled all American women to vote. But history is never as simple as the stories we tell about it. After that historic milestone, more women could cast a ballot than ever before, and yet the fight for women’s equal voting rights was, and still is, far from over.
Amended travels from the 1800's through to the present day to show us a quest for women’s full equality that has always been as diverse, complex and unfinished as the nation itself.
Meet our Host
Laura Free
As a historian of voting rights, Dr. Free uses the power of her pen and her voice to confront suffrage history with honesty. Through Amended, she is committed to creating a platform for stories that were ignored and erased by typical suffrage histories. When she's not working on Amended, Dr. Free is Associate Professor of History at Hobart & William Smith Colleges, a member of the NYS Women's Suffrage Commission, and an author; her most recent book is Suffrage Reconstructed: Gender, Race and Voting Rights in the Civil War Era.
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GUESTS
Sharia Benn
is a theater artist, playwright and living history performer. She is President, Executive Artistic Director of Sankofa African American Theatre Company in Harrisburg, PA and specializes in combining acting and historical studies to engage contemporary audiences as she portrays historically significant African-American women like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper; famed abolitionist, literary figure, and champion for women’s rights.
Cathleen D. Cahill
received her PhD at the University of Chicago. She taught at the University of New Mexico for thirteen years before moving to Penn State where she is now an associate professor of History. She is the author of Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement (University of North Carolina Press 2020). Her first book, Federal Fathers and Mothers: A Social History of the United States Indian Service, 1869-1933 (UNC 2011), won the Labriola Center for American Indian National Book Award and was finalist for the David J. Weber and Bill Clements Book Prize. This year she co-edited a special suffrage issue for the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era with Kimberly Hamlin and Crystal Feimster. She is also steering committee chair for the Coalition for Western Women's History. Photo: Michael T. Davis
Bettye Collier-Thomas
is Professor of History at Temple University. She is the founder and served as inaugural director of the Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial Museum and the National Archives for Black Women’s History. With NEH's support, Dr. Collier-Thomas organized “Black Women: A Research Priority: The First National Scholarly Research Conference on Black Women in America” (1979). A specialist in social, cultural, and political history, Dr. Collier-Thomas’s research focuses on women and African Americans. She is the recipient of numerous awards, honors, grants and fellowships for her scholarship which includes the books Jesus, Jobs, and Justice (2010); Sisters in the Struggle (2001); and African American Women and the Vote (co-editor, 1997); In Politics to Stay’: A Political History of African American Women (Forthcoming, Beacon, 2021).
Martha Jones
is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History at The Johns Hopkins University. She is a legal and cultural historian whose work examines how black Americans have shaped the story of American democracy. She is the author of Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All (2020); Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (2018), and All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture 1830-1900 (2007). Dr. Jones is also a public historian, frequently writing and speaking for broader audiences, and curating museum exhibitions.
Bayer Lee
has served as Pastor of the First Chinese Baptist Church, Mabel Lee's church in New York City, since 2004. He is also a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Columbia University Teachers College, where he received his Ed.D. in 2013. His research was funded by a Fulbright Grant in 1993, and his interests include spatial memories and housing studies, Hakka and Taishan ethnographies, and the formation of New York City's Chinatown. Committed to honoring Mabel Lee's legacy, Bayer is currently planning a celebration in honor of the 100th anniversary of Mabel's completion of her PhD at Columbia University, tentatively scheduled for Summer 2021. He is interested in using social construction theory to explore the significance of her dissertation research and her life.
MarlenA Myles
Annelise Orleck
teaches U.S. history, Jewish Studies and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Dartmouth College. She is co-founder and co-President of the Dartmouth AAUP chapter. Orleck is the author of five books: Common Sense and A Little Fire: Women and Working Class Politics in the United States (1995; 2017); Soviet Jewish Americans (1999); Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty (2005); Rethinking American Women's Activism (2014); and We Are All Fast Food Workers Now: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages (2018). She is also co-editor of The Politics of Motherhood; Activist Voices from Left to Right (1997) and The War on Poverty, 1964-1980: A New Grassroots History (2011). She lives in Thetford Center, Vermont.
Lisa Tetrault
is an associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University. She specializes in the history of gender, race, and American democracy—with an emphasis on memory and social movements. She is the author of the prize-winning book, The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848-1898. A frequent commentator on the suffrage centennial, Dr. Tetrault also serves as an historical consultant for Nineteenth Amendment projects launched by the National Constitution Center, the Woodrow Wilson House, the Schlesinger Library, and Ancestry.com, as well as the documentary, “The Vote” ( PBS’s American Experience). She is currently at work on a genealogy of the Nineteenth Amendment.
Judith Wellman
is a historian who specializes in nineteenth century America, women’s history, the Underground Railroad, and historic preservation. She is the director of Historical New York Research Associates, professor emerita of history at SUNY Oswego, and former park historian at the Women’s Rights National Park in Seneca Falls, NY. Dr. Wellman is the editor of Landmarks of Oswego County, and author of Brooklyn’s Promised Land: The Free Black Community of Weeksville (NYU Press, 2012); and The Road to Seneca Falls: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the First Woman’s Rights Convention (2004).
SPONSORS
Philip Lewis &
Catherine Porter
C Evan Stewart
Susan Strauss, Hobart & William Smith Colleges
SPONSOR AMENDED
Lipstick & Vinyl is our advertising partner. Contact allyson@
For Sponsorship, email [email protected]
OUR TEAM
Laura Free, Host & Writer
Reva Goldberg, Producer, Editor, & Co-Writer
Scarlett Rebman, Project Director
Kordell K. Hammond
Nicholas MacDonald
Joseph Murphy
Sara Ogger
ANTONIO PONTÓN-NÚÑEZ
Michael Washburn
Music by Michael John Hancock and Live Footage.
Artwork by Simonair Yoho of Kafi Kafi Co.
